E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC NEWCASTLE – BREAKFAST WITH PAUL CULLIVER
FRIDAY, 20 MARCH 2026
Subjects: Liddell Battery commissioning, Default Market Offer, Fuel security
PAUL CULLIVER (HOST): [inaudible] So what if you could build a big battery that would output some of that power? What would that mean to the energy grid? Well, today is the commissioning for the Liddell big battery. Let’s find out about it from Josh Wilson, Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy. Who joins us in the studio? Good morning.
JOSH WILSON: Hey, Paul, good to be with you.
CULLIVER: Welcome back to Newcastle. What does 500 megawatts of battery power mean to the grid here in New South Wales?
WILSON: Yeah. Well, it’s one of the biggest batteries to be delivered in Australia, probably the third biggest in Australia, the second biggest in New South Wales, 500 megawatts, 1000 megawatt hours. It’s a two-hour capacity battery. It could power 200,000 homes across that period. So, it makes a significant contribution to the stability and supply in the New South Wales energy grid. And as you say, it really does mark this transition. I mean, the Hunter will continue to be a powerhouse. It has served that function for a long period of time, and the contribution that the Hunter community has made in that way is valued and recognised and is just going through this transition to a cleaner and cheaper energy system. And this is a very, very significant milestone today.
CULLIVER: Obviously, some people who are critical of the idea of having battery storage and replacing, the idea that battery is not a one for one, replacement of coal-fired power station. Coal-fired power is generating power. Batteries are storing it and dispatching it. It still has to come from somewhere. So, when people talk about the capacity, and they look well, they can only output at its max capacity for two hours, and then it’s done. What is the purpose of a battery like this? What can it actually achieve in the grand mix of things?
WILSON: Well, it’s dispatchable power. I get the reference you made before. In the end of the day in a power system you want to know where your power comes from. And batteries provide very reliable, dispatchable power. One single battery isn’t the whole answer to the needs of our system, but we are delivering more and more big batteries with every passing week. The great thing about batteries is that they soak up this incredibly abundant solar energy that we have at certain times of the day. At certain times of the day. We’ve got far more solar energy than we can use. It’s incredibly cheap. It’s virtually free. When you have big batteries, you soak up that abundant energy and you redeploy it later in the day. That is good for the health of the system. It’s certainly good for bringing down prices. And we’ve just seen yesterday, the latest indications about the what’s called the next Default Market Offer suggests that prices for households and businesses from the middle of the year will come down. Some suggestions here in New South Wales by around the 10% mark. That’s because we’re getting more and more renewables into the system since the election of the Albanese Government. Now 20 gigawatts of new renewables, plus eight gigawatts of dispatchable power in the form of big batteries, and that is having a healthy effect on our energy system.
CULLIVER: It’s an interesting thing because, of course, the more expensive electricity is otherwise, the more beneficial, say, a new generator or a new battery, or even installing your home battery might look, but as electricity prices come down, does that then reduce the incentive to enter the market, either as someone who installs your own home battery, or they build a solar power plant, or whatever it might be, is there? Is there an equilibrium that we’re going to reach there?
WILSON: Well, it’s a fair point. I think most Australians, whether they’re households or businesses, have experienced price pressures with power. So, there would be, you know, there’s a fair way of that downward pressure to go before that kind of concern, I think would apply. We recognise that. We recognise those power pressures across the economy. But what we’ve done is taken those big picture steps to transition our energy system as a whole, which had to occur. I mean this is about having a cleaner and cheaper energy system. It is about tackling dangerous climate change. But when you think about the transition at Liddell from a long-standing old coal-fired power station to now one of the largest batteries in Australia, coal-fired power stations are aging and have become unreliable and expensive, and in fact, they are causing a lot of the cost pressures that Australians have experienced. So, we need to make that transition. We need to give people the opportunity at the household level with solar and now the Cheaper Home Battery program, which has delivered more than 265,000 batteries Australia wide, so that households and small and medium enterprises can take control of their energy destiny, and most particularly, like literally, from one day to the next, when you put on solar and batteries, see massive reductions in your own personal costs.
CULLIVER: Josh Wilson is your guest this morning, Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy. In the region, to well help and be on site for the commissioning of this 500-megawatt battery at Liddell. You mentioned the Australian Energy Regulators Default Market Offer, and there are different rates and tariffs, but across the board, it looks like a roughly 10% drop in those prices on the Eastern Seaboard. What is your analysis showing? Why is it that the AER is saying that that DMO can now drop by 10%?
WILSON: It really is because of the deployment of renewables over the last few years, all of the regulatory agencies have acknowledged that renewables are the cheapest form of generation. When we that abundant solar flowing into our system and we’re able to store it and redeploy it through batteries, it puts downward pressure on system costs. And it’s important to recognise that that downward pressure will benefit everyone. When you see something like the Default Market Offer come down in the way that you’ve just described, so that a household or a business that puts on a solar and a cheaper home battery will benefit, but the neighbour next door, who might not choose to do that, will get that sort of system-wide benefit too. We’ve been clear since 2022 in saying that our energy system needs to evolve. The previous nine years, we saw energy generation exit the system. We saw aging coal-fired power stations reach end of life and become very expensive and unreliable – that could not be allowed to continue in the 21st Century. We need a new, modern, cleaner and cheaper energy system, and that is taking shape before our eyes. Last year, for a full quarter, we saw renewables go above 50%, we saw renewables out-generate coal in the eastern seaboard for all of the month of September and then all of the month of October. Those are pretty significant thresholds that indicate the kind of progress that we’re making.
CULLIVER: So, people obviously will benefit from, it’s a draft decision, but of course, if we see something like this represented in actual bills from July. Do you think there’s a one off? Do you are we now on a downward trend for electricity prices? I mean, obviously, that’s the hope. Is that the likelihood?
WILSON: Well, the long term trajectory, as we transition our energy system to have more and more renewables and storage is for that downward pressure to continue to make a difference and to give Australia more control over our energy future as we deploy those resources and get those sort of broader industrial and innovation and job creation and job benefits. And that’s one of the things about the Liddell big battery. 600 workers across the project, I think, 150 at its peak, but really significantly, a leaning into opportunities for apprentices, for Indigenous-led businesses and for local content. 95% of all the steel in that project was sourced locally. So that’s a good thing, but there’s no doubt our best future is a future made in Australia and a clean energy future.
CULLIVER: The other one thing I want to talk about this morning, and obviously on many Australians minds, is the cost of fuel, the availability of fuel. Anthea Harris has been appointed as the coordinator of a new Fuel Supply Task Force. What powers will she have to make sure that when Newcastle and Hunter locals turn up to the bowser there’s fuel at a competitive price?
WILSON: We recognize that this war in the Middle East is putting significant pressure on global fuel supplies, and we are experiencing that in Australia, every country around the world, is experiencing it. We’re not immune and it’s making a difference when people go and fill up. The issue is not fuel supply. Australia’s fuel supply is stable. This government took steps to increase the stock holdings here in Australia and we continue to see fuel arrive and be refined. The issue is that when you have a global crisis, understandably, some people feel motivated to go and get more fuel than they normally do, and that has caused these localised demand spikes, with in most cases, 100% increases …
CULLIVER: Is it entirely consumer behaviour is there not actions from some of the wholesalers and some of the bigger retailers that have also caused this?
WILSON: Well, it’s put the the whole supply system under some pressure. So that has contributed to it. The Treasurer has resourced the ACCC to have a really good look at some of the participants in the fuel supply chain, because we don’t want to see anti-competitive or price gouging behaviour, and unfortunately, that is something that Australians have experienced in relation to fuel prices over the years, even just within a seven day cycle, people see these kind of strange surges and drops in fuel prices. So that is part of it.
CULLIVER: I just really want to understand, because obviously, if it’s just consumers turning up to the bowser and taking more than they need, then something that a coordinator or Fuel Supply Task Force probably can’t do much about. So, what can they actually do to make sure the fuel goes where it needs to?
WILSON: We’ve got to recognise those points of shortage or scarcity, a lot of them have been in rural and regional Australia, and better coordinate the extra supply that the government is facilitating. So, we’ve released fuel out of our stock holding – 500 million litres – as Minister Chris Bowen detailed yesterday. We’ve also temporarily relaxed the fuel standard so that fuel that would otherwise be exported is, in fact, made available into the Australian market for Australian consumers. But what the what the task force coordinator will help do, working with the industry as a whole, working with states and territories, is say we’ve got to direct that extra available fuel to the places where the shortages are acute. That’s a coordination task, and that’s what she will be focused on.
CULLIVER: I just want to go to this question that I’ve had from Guy on the text line. ‘Good morning, Paul, would it be better to spend the money intended for the proposal of Liddell battery installation’ – I should make the point, it’s not proposed, it’s being turned on today – ‘on an oil refinery?’ So Guy making a point, instead of spending so much money on renewable energy, could we be building an oil refinery? And obviously, make the point, this is AGL’s battery and I dare say, with some Capacity Investment Scheme investments from the federal government, nonetheless, should our priorities be looking at building small oil refineries here in the country?
WILSON: Well, the two different kinds of energy. I mean, it’s not a bad question from your listener, but two different kinds of energy. Obviously, liquid fuel is transport energy. That battery is contributing to stationary energy. Our electricity supply, the power that you get when you put your kettle on. And those two things are very different. We need to maintain energy security in both respects, and this government has taken some very big strides in both areas, but they are different. Australia has two oil refineries. At the beginning of the last coalition government, there were six. So, four did close on their watch. We made it very clear that the two existing refineries will be maintained and continue to operate, as they are actually working with fuel as it comes in right now. That is not putting a squeeze on our on our supply. In fact, this the supply itself is stable. It’s, it’s about the coordination, making sure that we get the fuel to those areas of scarcity. And, you know, expecting that, that Australians will do what, what Australians always do in the face of a crisis, we will, we will knuckle down, work together, be sensible, communicate and consult and tackle this issue in a way that looks after our broad wellbeing. And so, the message over the last few weeks has just been people should get and use the fuel that they need. But obviously it’s best, as we saw during COVID, if people don’t go and purchase more fuel than they otherwise need, because it’s that behaviour that has caused some of the doubling of demand in certain areas.
CULLIVER: And I sure I probably should just ask the question of clarification, how much government money has gone towards this battery that AGL has built? I know $35 million from ARENA. Is it also part of the Capacity Investment Scheme? I should just ask you directly.
WILSON: Yeah, no, the $35 million was contributed through ARENA to this project. That’s the federal government’s contribution to the project as a whole. And obviously, you know, very happy to provide that support, as we’ve done in a range of ways over the last four years, to kick start and catalyse that transformation that we’re seeing before our eyes.
CULLIVER: And is it also underwritten through the Capacity Investment Scheme?
WILSON: No, this project’s not underwritten through the capacity investment scheme, but it received that Australian Renewable Energy Agency support.
CULLIVER: Look, as you can tell, obviously, energy a big topic for our region, so I want to cover so I do appreciate your time today.
WILSON: Yeah, no worries. Thank you.
ENDS
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